Thursday, 20 November 2014

Writers on Reading: Karen Joy Fowler

http://karenjoyfowler.com/


A 2015 Man Booker prize nominee for her Novel 'We are all completely beside ourselves' Karen Joy Fowler is the author of five other novels as well as three short story collections. Having featured in the New York Times Notable books list several times she is no stranger to success, and we are very happy she was able to take some time to talk to us. 

What is the first book you remember reading?
This is a hard question, because I was read to so much as a child, I can’t quite separate out the books that I read and those read to me.  But I suspect I started reading for myself with the classic “Dick and Jane” books.  “Run, Spot, run!”


What effect does being an author have on you as a reader?
There was a period early one when the work I was doing to learn to write better quite spoiled my reading as I was always making myself stop and look at the techniques and the choices – pick the text apart.  It was bad enough to make me ask myself, if the price I have to pay to become a writer is my love of reading, will I pay it?”  And answered that I would not.  Too high a price. But fortunately, that turned out just to be a temporary situation and I soon was able to lose myself in a book again.


Are there any books you can read again and again?
Many. The pleasures of rereading outstrip even the pleasures of reading.  I return often to Austen and Dickens.   Middlemarch.  I reread The Once and Future King and The Lefthand of Darkness and Brat Farrar and Ilywhacker and many others.


Are there any genres that you wouldn’t choose to read?
Emphatically no.  I like them all.


What is the current book on your nightstand/coffee table?
Daniel Woodrell’s The Maid’s Verion

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